In this episode Erin and I dive deep into the benefits of thoughtful movement through puzzle games and movement puzzles. Whether you have a dog who moves without thinking (adolescent labrador?) or a dog who needs to build confidence in movement, Erin argues this type of training offers significant benefits for sports and life.
Transcription
Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Erin Lynes about helping our dogs learn to use their bodies on purpose. Hi, Erin. Welcome back to the podcast.
Erin Lynes: Hello, Melissa. Thanks for having me back.
Melissa Breau: Excited to chat. To start us out, do you want to just remind everybody kind of a little bit about you?
Erin Lynes: Sure. I'm a dog trainer and breeder in Quesnel, BC, Canada. I am a certified professional canine fitness trainer, certified counterfeit leader, a licensed family dog mediator, and an instructor at the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. So I got lots of things going on. I grew up doing sled dog racing, so at the national level with sprint dogs and then discovered agility, rally dock, diving, scent work, all the other kind of cool things that fill my days now and love doing anything that gives me time with more, more time with my dogs.
And currently in my household, I've got a whole pile of Labradors, ranging from the youngest is 7 month old Velveeta to the oldest 15 year old Shelby, and the lone little non Labrador who is Leroy, my beagle mix, and he kind of runs the show around here. It's kind of funny.
Melissa Breau: All right, so Erin, when we're talking about movement on purpose, what does that mean and what does that look like kind of in practice or is it easier to ask about, you know, kind of what it looks like when it's not that? I don't know, you tell me.
Erin Lynes: Yeah, we could probably start out thinking about what it isn't. And if you think about like the average adolescent Labrador who's bouncing off the walls and full of chaotic energy and they're moving a lot, but there's not a lot of thought involved. That's what it's not. But thoughtful, deliberate movement requires being aware of and caring about controlling individual limb movement. It's beneficial when dogs have to make precise or difficult movements, like, for example, if they're running across a dog walk or they're performing weave poles at speed or bounding through a forest full of fallen logs where it kind of matters for safety's sake, how they move their bodies.
Dogs who are switching directions or stopping and starting quickly because of their sports or their, their lifestyle in those situations, we want that deliberate, thoughtful movement, even when it's happening at speed. We want them to know how to control their bodies and, and what to do to, to be accurate. When they're moving their front feet, rear feet, their whole body, through space and time.
Melissa Breau: How is that different from, you know, just teaching a trained behavior? Like, how is being thoughtful about movement different than just, you know, here's a trained, specific behavior that you can do?
Erin Lynes: That's a good question. And I thought maybe an example would be helpful. So if we're just thinking about getting the behavior, think about teaching your dog a sit. You ask them to sit, you lure upwards, and their butt hits the floor. Ta da. They've got to sit, so that might be as much as you care about.
And every time you ask them to do it, their butt hits the floor. But they take a different strategic route to, to get there. How and why they move their feet, they probably aren't really thinking about that. They're just thinking about getting to the end product. But if we want our dog to sit in a specific way and think about their movement, we might use a front foot target.
So their feet are, their front feet are still and steady. We ask for them to then use their rear feet to step forward to get into a sit that way. And when we do that enough times, that movement pattern becomes a little bit more set. It feels more natural to them. It becomes part of their neural pathways. And when they think about sitting, that's how they end up doing it.
But they need it broken down into those little steps. We can't like actually say, hey, Velveeta, when I'm saying sit, I really mean keep your front feet still and move your rear feet. We have to do those little pieces to separated out. And when we're doing that, that's how they're realizing, oh, actually there is a specific way I can do this movement. And it actually doesn't feel that bad when I do that.
And it's super efficient. And they just become conditioned physically, but also through the thought process to being able to do it that way. So that's one example of how that differs.
Melissa Breau: So on the flip side of that, you kind of talked about that adolescent Labrador picture earlier, which I think is a really good mental picture of people to have in their heads. Can you talk a little about the difference between, you know, physical exercise that just kind of burns energy and the type of movement we're talking about, where it really actually teaches some body awareness?
Erin Lynes: Yeah. So exercise that teaches body awareness requires some pre planning and structure. We have to think about what we're aiming for, what props or patterns we can use to help us get there. A dog could do all sorts of different things to just burn calories and blow off steam and have fun. And it doesn't necessarily matter how their body moves to do that. But when we're talking about body awareness, we're.
We're controlling the scene a little bit more. We're planning for how they get from point A to point B and watching for those little moments of criteria and their posture and their paw placement and making that part of the picture. And I think as a bonus, when I think about a dog just like, you know, using physical exercise to burn calories and to express energy, I'm thinking about like a dog in a big place and going for a big run or doing high speed stuff.
But we can teach body awareness stuff very often in a pretty small space. So a more controlled setting, which means it's a lot more accessible if you are limited to what you can use due to the weather or, you know, what sort of spaces you have available at different times of the year.
Melissa Breau: Can you talk us through an example, maybe the type of exercises we're talking about? Sure.
Erin Lynes: So one pattern game that I posted online recently and lots of people were curious about it, it's one that I call stop and go. And it's super easy to set up. And it's great for dogs who need to develop a little bit more control over stopping their motion and starting it back up again, which we can go back to our chaotic nonsense Labrador. I don't think they're always thinking about that.
They're like, now I'm stopped, now I'm like, what happened? How did you get there? How does your body actually move to get that? So an exercise we can use to help develop that just requires a couple of props. I use two vertical props. I like to use jump standards, but cones or toilet plungers or something like that. Stationed about 8ft apart and then a platform in the middle of them.
And essentially we're just asking our dog to go around one of the vertical props, stop on the platform, reward them there, send them around the other one. So the end result of movement is they're doing a series of figure eights where they stop on the platform in between every time they cross the middle. So we can adapt that to our specific needs a little bit too. We could have our dog sit on the platform.
If your dog is most likely to need a sit out of motion, if they're an obedience dog or a field dog or there's some sport or activity where that makes most sense. If you're teaching stop contacts, you can make that a two on, two off behavior so that they're getting to rehearse that motion to stop to go again. And as they get used to this and they get, you can see that the control is developing, they're being more accurate.
They're not overshooting the platform. They're able to get all of that on the first go. You can increase the difficulty simply by moving the vertical props outwards so that there's more distance between them, which usually results in more speed and adds challenge that way. So sometimes we can help it be a little bit more realistic to, to our sport goals that way too, over time.
Melissa Breau: That's pretty cool. And that's what you, you're sharing the two on two off example, I think, in your video the other day, right? Yeah, yeah. What changes have you seen kind of in dogs engagement or arousal management or emotional presence? You know, as they start thinking about movement in a more intentional way? There's lots of different things. And I think if we think specifically about the emotional regulation part, thinking kind of from a big picture, I don't think our dogs were necessarily designed to spend most of their day on the couch waiting for us to come home from work and then like getting to do all their fun stuff for the whole day crammed into maybe an hour, two hours when we're in class or we're going for our adventures or those sorts of things.
If dogs are left to their own devices, they tend to move more, but move more moderately with more moderate arousal. So one of the things I like about these sorts of games is we can get quite a bit more activity that's in that moderate arousal range for them and that has really nice benefits, not just for them physically, but for them mentally as well. If they're spending some of their exercise calories in this lower, slightly lower arousal range, it's really, it's good for their brain.
It's. They don't have to be overexcited or very highly excited all the time in order to be able to get fit and have fun that way. But it's also kind of critical for the, the body awareness part portion of it. When our dogs are very highly aroused or moving at very high speeds, their brains do not translate those tiny details that are required for fine movement. So maybe they actually do get the movement pattern done that you're asking for.
Say you're asking them to do weaves and they do it really fast. Great. But if one little factor changes in the next time you run a course, their body doesn't translate it. Well, their brain doesn't translate it because they didn't, they didn't actually process the individual elements of that movement. So teaching things in a lower arousal state so that their brain can say, okay, it was right foot first, left foot second, then the rear foot, then this, and then your tail wags to this degree to keep you in balance.
It's, it's super helpful to teach all those kinds of movements at a slightly more moderate pace first before you cranking it up. And because if we're thinking about sport dogs, they don't just say, okay, I'm learning now, so I'll slow down. We have to often take things a little bit out of context and put them into these other situations so that they're not making associations that necessarily get them really excited when you're trying to focus on the body awareness part of it.
Melissa Breau: So maybe like movement puzzles and pattern games away from the agility field first is, is a helpful way to do it if your dog already has pretty big excitement about agility. For example, you mentioned agility in there. How do these skills kind of transfer to those other types of activities, sports activities or obedience stuff for like day to day life?
Erin Lynes: Lots of transfer. There's like an endless amount of imagination that you can use to shape these sorts of games to make them suit your sports.
I'm thinking about agility first and foremost in my mind right now because I have a boisterous adolescent Labrador who is in the early stages of learning agility and she did not care if the bar stayed up on a jump. And we are not talking high jumps. She's like, you get to where you're going and if the bar flies, the bar flies. And it's like, oh, marshmallow, so cute.
But this is not the object of the game. And she's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. So we had to back up a little bit. We are playing some of these pattern games, movement puzzles, to try and help her realize where she is in space and time. And it's even shocking to me, even though this is not the first dog that I've taught in this manner, how quickly the improvements are.
So we haven't dropped a bar in agility class in like the last three weeks. And the only thing that has changed, we haven't actually done any agility training is that we've been working on these sorts of games. So agility, yes, definitely, many applications. The stop and go games are really, really good for obedience dogs. I actually asked on my Facebook page when I posted that sample exercise like what else can you think of that might have implications?
And people answered like pointing dogs who are sniff, sniff, sniff and then they have to freeze in that pointing position. IGP dogs, there's several movements where they're like running full speed and they have to stop on a dime. Retrievers, we whistles and ask them to sit so they have to do like a 180 and sit right away. All of those sports that require those kind of movements, obedience go out drops on recalls those sorts of things and day to day life.
My other little yellow Labrador was out on a shed antler hiking expedition for the first time last week and she is a very fast, big ranging dog and she's not nearly as awkward as Marshmallow, but she moves three times as fast and is 10 times more of a daredevil. And just the, the way that I see her able to handle her body when there's like changes in her striding that are required really quick because of the way the brush and the woods are super, super helpful for adventure type situations like that too for those real life hiking and.
Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Yep, for sure. So we're talking about all this stuff because you have a three week class coming up in the March term. Do you want to talk a little more about the class and maybe who might want to sign up?
Erin Lynes: Absolutely. I'm super excited about this class because it's. I've been teaching a little bit of movement puzzle type stuff in some of my other classes, but now we get to do only that and work on some of these additional bonus stop and go games.
So that's exciting. So it's a three week class so I'm still actually in the process of deciding exactly which exercises are going to be included in this class. But what I expect to happen is we're going to spend a little bit of time each week on the movement puzzle pattern games. If you haven't seen those, those are developed by Mari Valma. She's a fitness genius, I believe. And she's kind of curated a whole program about how to go, how to teach dogs to go from bowl to bowl and using thoughtful placement of objects between these bowls to develop specific patterns.
And then we're going to spend the rest of the week working on some stop and go exercises so that we're developing that balance with where the dogs are transitioning from movement to stop to movement and finding their own balance points during those parts of the exercises. So dogs who could benefit from this class include boisterous adolescent labrador Retrievers. Imagine that. Actually any sort of dog who is just like, feels like a bundle of tension and energy when they're moving and you just think like, wow, you've got so much in you.
That's a great dog for this sort of class because probably at the very least they could use some more moderate arousal outlets for their activity. But you're also probably going to find lots of cool things about how their body awareness improves as they start to have to be a little more into thinking mode. So that whole kind of cluster of boisterous bulldozer type dogs. These games are also pretty fun for dogs who are a little bit more tentative because they're all pattern games.
We can build some confidence as they're moving through the different games and, and patterns. And another group of dogs who could benefit from this are dogs who have recently come back into fitness training or sport after an injury. So maybe their body feels a little different because they're still building up muscle or whatever. As long as they're sound and they've been cleared for exercise. Helping them reestablish their motor patterns is a really cool way to do this.
And I would include senior dogs in that group as well because their bodies are changing pretty routinely too as they age. So there's, there's a pretty good spectrum of dogs that this could apply for. They do, we do want them to be, you know, painful, free and sound and that sort of thing. But there's not a lot of high intensity that we require. So that's perhaps something for people to look forward to if they're thinking about this class.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. Any final thoughts or maybe key points you kind of want to leave folks with?
Erin Lynes: Listen, you guys are gonna fall in love with these sorts of pattern games and you're gonna find yourself thinking about where you can do them and how, what kind of cool little obstacles you can acquire. So I'm sorry in advance if this becomes your new addiction. But there's all kinds of fun props and ways that we can get creative.
Use household items to help with the body awareness exercises. And it's a lot of fun. So I'm really looking forward to it. You had like a list. I think I was looking at prereqs and stuff too. Do you want to talk about that at all? Yeah, we don't. There's not a huge lot of prerequisite skills. It really helps if your dog already knows how to easily go around an object.
But I'll also include that in a pre class lecture just to make sure that dogs are able to do that. There's a number of different props that we can use in this class. The required props I would say are at least one platform, three cavaletti type bars. They don't need to be professional grade. You can use broomsticks or dowels or pool noodles. We will use some foot targets.
We will use some random household items. So we're probably going to get a little creative based on what you have available because that's half the fun is seeing what you have to work with. So recycle bins and chairs and blankets and folded up tarps and cardboard boxes and things. You can see the full list on the class page on the Fenci website. But basically get prepared to start going through all the odds and ends and things you have because we'll probably want to see what kind of cool ideas we can come up with.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all this, Erin.
Erin Lynes: Thanks so much for having me. It's so fun.
Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Julie Flannery to talk about teaching an emergency stop. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by BenSound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio Editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!